science & research & the natural world

Category Archives: Random

I love the arcs of Neptune and Pluto with their long, slow revolutions vortices. Watching this makes me feel a bit uneasy, much like I imagine Pope Clement VII must have felt when hearing Copernicus’ heliocentricity theory for the first time. But as Kottke warns, take this with a grain of salt – I don’t buy the “lagging” bit. The follow-up is even tripper and had me wondering such deep thoughts as, “Gee, I wonder if it matters how close to the Galactic Plane we are right now?”

Two things that caught my eye this morning, the first is a story about students gaming a professor’s grading scheme on the final exam:

“‘The students refused to come into the room and take the exam, so we sat there for a while: me on the inside, they on the outside,’ Fröhlich said. ‘After about 20-30 minutes I would give up…. Then we all left.’”

Why would the students boycott? Because the prof curved his grades based on the top performer… so if the top score was a 0, then everyone gets an A! The prof was cool about the whole thing, but he has since changed his protocols so it can’t happen again. Full story here.

Ever thought about getting a tattoo? Perhaps you already have one, maybe you are totally against the very idea. I personally don’t have any, but I’m not against them – I just haven’t found anything I’d like to have permanently imprinted on my body. This may, however, have changed this morning, when I saw this:

which of course sent me on a random walk through nerd tattoos on the web, and wow there are a lot! Including this one, based on Darwin’s original mock-up of the tree of life:

Now I’m imagining where these would look good on me. Do you have any science tattoos? Would you consider getting one?